Category Archives: My life

Soccer

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A painting of two football players trying to both get the ball on a football field, The players are painted with clear lines, lots of color. The legs of the football players and the football itself are much larger than normal. One player has a blue soccer outfit. The other player has orange colored clothes.The soccer gene is completely lacking in my. Father Kees and mother Nel were both soccer trainers with various youth teams at VVSB (The local team from Noordwijkerhout). My brother Bert was also a player. I was sometimes forces to visit the games and watch, but I prefered to spend my time picking grass for my rabbits. The game was not interesting to me, and I still don’t care for it.

Well, the gene is back! Alan has a love for the game that amazes me. Alan is part of the Las Palmas youth team of ‘Atleti Formento‘. Now, every night we play a game of soccer in the hall (with a soft ball), every visit to the park he spends playing football with the kids there, every weekend we go to the park what Alan tries out his new soccer shoes. Once a week he goes to training.

Louis de Funès and a puzzle

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a painting with mickey mouse, a bottle of wine, cheese and a crossant and the eiffel tower all on top of the french flagI can still remember the situation perfectly. As a little boy I was sitting on the couch, next to my little brother and my family. We were all watching Louis de Funès. It was a series movie called something like ‘La gandarmes de Saint Tropez‘. In French with subtitles (with would normally take away any interest I would have), but with Louis is was different. I remember 45 minutes of hilarious situations, ridiculously funny solutions and mayhem. We were direct fans, and watched all the shows. I think in my subconciousness I connected France with the sense of pleasure and enjoyment. To this day visiting France makes me recall the feelings I felt as a little kid, watching the show. I look forward to visiting France more than any other place, just because I get a dose of happiness in advance.

The three kings arranged for a special gift this year. A puzzle, with a message on the back. After completing the puzzle the kids had to turn it around, and the gift became clear. This year the kids get a great adventure, and will visit France, to spend a couple of days at the Disney park, and a couple of days in Paris. We are not going with just the four of us, but we wil go with a big group of friends. 7 kids and 6 adults. I suspect it will be lots of fun and excitement.

We plan to go in June, so I still have time to practice my ‘Louis de Funès’-French a bit. Finally I will be able to use my standard/favourite French vocabulary.

– ‘La summicion sil vous plaid’, the bill please
– ‘Bonjour’, good morning
– ‘un vin avec fromage avec un crossant sil vous plaid’, a wine with some cheese and a croassant please
– ‘merci bocoupe, au revour’, thanks a lot, see you
– ‘Command tu t apelle’, whats your name?
– ‘Je m apelle Adrie’, i’m adrie
– ‘Un chien avec un tres petit cull’, a dog with a very small penis

Except for the last sentence all my French should be really useful.

Party on La Gomera

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We are taking a short break and we’ll be going to la Gomera for a couple of days. We leave by plane on tuesday and return home on thursday. A short trip but very welcome to break up our daily routine.

We will be going with a few friends and at la Gomera we rented a big car for 7 people where we can all just fit. In addition to a big car we also rented a big house, hopefully with a garden so we can maybe even have a bbq! It will be quite the adventure. Of course there is also a big celebration! It is Alan’s birthday, so there will be a great party.

Lego timelapse 31103

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Alex likes working with his tablet to make things. It gets even more attractive when various pieces of equipment are involved. This time he has produced a timelapse. A small Lego car (his brothers) was disassembled and rebuild, but now while making a picture every couple of seconds. This way the construction goes really fast. Alex did the building and the post production editing on his tablet. Add the intro, add a couple of images, fix the sound, and some music, Alex knows what to do and how to do it really well. This is the result.

Coach

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I will become a coach. The date we have to focus on is Saturday the 19th. The event is the Kids Race 2022, in Maspalomas. Alex and Alan will have to perform then. Alan will run 300 meters, and Alex needs to cover 1000 meters. The kids have developed some nasty habits for the weekends where they quickly get bored, and often the situation deteriorates rapidly into fighting. I hope to change this behaviour by focussing on something physical in the mornings. We will do a couple of training sessions, just like the real deal.

Usually we go to these running events without any preparation. The distances are so small that the kids can easily run them, and just participating is much more important than actually winning. This time I want to try and get a good result. Finish in the top 10. We need to approach this professionally. Evaluate the distance. Find out a good speed. See how much sprinting they can do. We have two weekends to prepare and train. If we go on Saterday and Sunday we have 4 sessions available. If they both try their distance twice it should be more than enough preparation. If they train in the morning they don’t even need to change their weekend routines (hopefully with less fighting).

The plan

  • Warming up. Walk to Romano (the track), do some jumping, some stretching, maybe a few push ups.
  • Review the track. Walk the entire distance, and discuss the optimal approach to running the distance in a good/easy/fast way.
  • Alan: 300 meters. First a small candy for some extra energy. Start running normally the first 220 meters, and finish with 80 meters superfast. Drink water and relax/rest. Do this twice! I will measure the time.
  • Alex: 1000 meters. First a small candy for some extra energy. Start running normally the first 300 meters, then slow down a bit for 300 meters to regain strength, then another 300 meters normally and finish with 100 meters superfast. Drink water and relax/rest. Do this twice! I will measure the time.
  • Cooling down, a few jumps, stretch, discuss results, walk back home.

    • Objective

    The results really are not so important. If the kids have a good time that is the only important thing. The preparation is more meant to stimulate the kids and to prepare them a bit. If they reach their goal of finishing with the first 10, well, thats great! It will boost their self-esteem, which is great. If they just finish that is also great. They will have prepared for something, and gave if their best try. This is also something to feel good about.

    Losing weight

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    I have to admit that I did have some unhealthy habits the last few years. Almost every day I ate some sausage, or some cheese, or a couple of nuts. A few days a week I would also drink a beer (usually after running), and these habits were a bit to much. Luckily these habits were reasonably easy to change.

    A few weeks ago I was still close to 80 kilos. I then set my target to 75 kilos (which is my usual weight), but as I am getting closer to my goal I am thinking that maybe it would be better to have an even lower goal of around 68. This seems to be the perfect average BMI, and it will leave me with some extra leverage and maybe even with some extra health benefits.

    I somehow doubt that for me this is really an obtainable goal, because the last time I weight less than 70 kilos must have been literaly in the previous century but if I don’t try I will never know. If I manage to do it I must treat myself to a good gift. Maybe a new Dell laptop.

    Vitamin C

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    I like eating my daily dose of vitamin C. I trust in the positive health effects even though I have absolutely no proof that the vitamin is actually a benefit to my health. Still, my mind clearly tells me that taking vitamins is a good thing, and it makes me happy.

    In Spain it is very hard to get vitamin C pills that you can take without first diluting them in water. I want something that will dilute in my stomach, because it is much easier. In holland this used to be my normal routine. Take a pill with some liquid, and done. One day, one pill, healthy me. It cannot be more simple.

    In Spain the routine would be: Get a glass of water. Get a vitamin C pill. Put the pill in the water, and stir. Keep stirring, because in cold water it does not dilute very well. Keep stirring. The vitamin pill is now like a small pile of dust on the bottom of the glass. Either keep stirring, or drink it all and hope that you get all the vitamins from the bottom. Add more water to the glass to get everything. Stir again, and try again. You don’t want more water, but you force yourself to drink it to avoid throwing away the vitamins. The same thing happens! Give up, put the glass with the traces of vitamin still on the bottom and on the sides of the glass in the dishwasher. A terribly frustating way to start the day healthy.

    Luckily I go to Holland every now and then, and now I found a great solution. At the kruidvat they sell huge pots with 500(!) vitamin C pills. Each pill has one gram of vitamin C, which is more than enough for me.

    FrameMaker

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    FrameMaker 5.5!I used to be a FrameMaker expert. My first job after finishing university was all about FrameMaker. I learned a lot in that job and even trained other people to use FrameMaker. Sadly it was only for a short while, a couple of years later my career grew in a different direction. Still, I am still reminded of my FrameMaker time whenever I have to make a document that’s bigger than one single page. FrameMaker used styles, page templates, and frames through which the text flowed. It worked! It simply worked, and it always worked, flawlessly. Even with huge documents of 1000 pages or more the software just worked, without any problems.

    FrameMaker was bought by Adobe and at the moment that was no problem, in fact, people hoped for an impuls where FrameMaker could be much bigger as part of the adobe suite. The impulse never happened and the product development was moved to India. Suddenly it became a product for which you needed a subscription. Pay each year. A terrible progression, but for me it was not an interesting tool anyway. For a couple of documents I could never justify a price-tag of around 400 EURs (not sure about the price though). Now with the subscription approach I cannot even find the price, so that does not bode well.

    I was working on a new book project, and once again I ran into the usual problems. Word just does not work. OpenOffice and LibreOffice don’t work. Working online with google Docs is even worse. They all work, but just not good enough. Maybe I am spoiled, but I want to see what is going on. See picture anchors, see the frames where the text will flow. I want to know which styles are available. I want to tweak the master pages. Maybe it is possible, but to achieve these simple things you need to figure out almost the core of each program, and it never works intuitively. In the end small tweaks costs lots of time, and big tweaks… better forget those.

    There is still hope for me! I found a new tool, which makes me think about the old FrameMaker. Affinity Publisher which only costs around 50 euros! A bargain it if really works. I will give it a try.